Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday December 10, 2011 @06:04PM
from the outbreak-at-the-hospital dept.

McGruber writes "The Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper is reporting that a hospital with campuses in Lawrenceville and Duluth, Georgia turned ambulances away after the discovery of 'a system-wide computer virus that slowed patient registration and other operations.' They're only currently accepting patients with 'dire emergencies.' A spokeswoman for the hospital said the diversion happened because 'it's a trauma center and needs to be able to respond rapidly.' The situation began on Thursday afternoon and is expected to last through the weekend."

I'm currently inside a hospital data center and I can tell you that windows is behind the scenes of a lot of the systems we use. Everyone in "the know" thinks it sucks that the majority of the problems we encounter is because of borked hardware configurations in appliance machines or Windows servers. We are on mainframe (as of today, it's still the only way to get everyone's critical data to almost a dozen moajor sites at once with 99.9 uptime and I don't see us abandoning it anytime soon) and there is a god-damned Windows server that is only used to encode EDI transactions to the JES2 spooler that always crashes, causing the spool to fill up, endangering the entire system. It's a very serious problem as the only solution to it once JES is full is to IPL the system.

The server in question doesn't even show an error message. Well, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. you can stop and start the services all you like, but you're just wasting time as the JES2 spool gets bigger. The only solution is to reboot the Windows Server. It is redundantly mirrored, but we any of you with any sense will know that this does not make the situation any less frightening. The mirror is bound to be subject to the exact same problem, since it's software-related, which would put you back at square 1 in the event of a fail-over.

Don't even get me started about malware. Of course, all the workstations throughout the system are Windows systems. Those should not matter in case of a power outage or system-wide failure because we have downtime procedures in place, but let's face it, we'd be majorly crippled if we were to ever loose our entire network and it would likely impair our ability to serve customers. Although it shouldn't. So far we've been lucky.

You can dynamically add volumes to the JES2 spool. No need for an IPL. That's what your system programmer should doing. And automation should be running a command such as $DJOBQ,SPL=(%>3.0) every 5 minutes or so to check for jobs with high spool utilization, triggering an alert to the consoles.

While that may be so, an idiot is an idiot, whether he be a customer or not.

In fact, much of American business is dedicated to exploiting idiots. Half or more? There really are a lot of legitimate businesses, that have products to sell to intelligent people. The rest? Bank of America comes to mind. They do provide some invaluable services that are necessary to the economy. At the same time, they enjoy ripping off the clueless idiots who can't survive without an 18% (or higher) interest credit cart.

Every single operating system known to man is prone to viruses - some more so than others. More to the point, would be asking about exploits, rather than viruses. All systems have exploits. The only reason Linux and/or Mac is more secure than Windows, is the philosophy behind security. Windows sacrifices security for convenience, Linux sacrifices some convenience for security, and Mac is somewhere between the two.

But, an idiot can compromise any system, in about two heartbeats, if he is given admin powe

Yes, but until the health care reform package runs most of the for profit insurance companies out of business that's going to remain to be the case.

Sprained ankles though I wouldn't lump as a minor ailment. You don't necessarily always know if it's a sprain or a minor factor or torn ligament. Delaying care can end up costing a lot more money and result in inferior recovery.

Yes, but until the health care reform package runs most of the for profit insurance companies out of business

Whatever profits are to be purportedly "lost" during the healthcare reform will be made up by others' mandatory enrollment. It's all feelgood bullshit to keep the same ridiculously bloated healthcare complex fat. There are no real compromises here, and as usual, the common man loses.

It's funny how all the big-business parrots are decrying it as "socialism," the for-profit healthcare complex is a big-businessman's wet dream.

Actually, the problem with that theory is that the health care reform package limits overhead to 15% for group packages and 20% for individual packages. The question is how that's going to be defined and the DHHS is making them include sales charges as overhead. Ultimately, they might be still around as private insurers, but the profit is going to be absolute crap as they'll have to rebate any money they take in on premiums above that back to the subscribers.

A long time ago I worked for a medical equipment company, and learned that there are also some systemic biases that greatly increase the costs. Note I did not say 'inflate', because it truly is a complex problem with no magic solution.

So, this company made dialysis machines, which were largely sold to hospitals. These machines included a blood pump, which is basically a piece of clear 1/2" vinyl tubing formed into about 2/3 of a circle, with a triangular 'cam' with little rollers that went around and arou

It IS fat, it's just not the doctors and hospitals themselves that are fat. The U.S. spends more per-capita on healthcare than any other country in the world, but we aren't even in the top ten for results. That money is going somewhere and that somewhere is fat.

The problem is that people in Washington think insurance is magic. The best insurance can do is charge you the average actual cost of healthcare plus extra for profit and overhead. That's not helpful to someone who can't afford X.

Sprained ankles though I wouldn't lump as a minor ailment. You don't necessarily always know if it's a sprain or a minor factor or torn ligament. Delaying care can end up costing a lot more money and result in inferior recovery.

Not really. Unless your managed to fracture more than one bone, in which case the pain would likely drive you to seek care, if you elevated it, put some ice on it, took some OTC pain meds you could easily wait out a weekend.

I don't know who you're working for, but in my health care system we're happy about the potential for health care reform because in an Accountable Care Organization [wikipedia.org] we can direct more resources toward keeping a population of people healthy, rather than racking up as many procedures as possible to keep the lights on. (It turns out we primary care physicians get paid more for paring corns on your feet than spending half an hour providing evidence-based preventive care for your 2 year old's checkup.) It makes

Catch a sore throat on the weekend as someone with an issue with their immune system when your regular care provider is unavailable, I think I'd go to the hospital too. Likewise if I was aged and fell, causing a swelling of the ankle. The injury could potentially be life threatening.

Just because we're young and durable doesn't mean that there aren't a good number of others who have genuine health concerns that seem trivial to us.

A sore throat can be something trivial, but it can also be something major. Going to a GP to have it checked out rather than waiting and seeing is the height of common sense. A hospital, not so much. Hospitals can do nothing a GP can't do, for those sorts of ailments. Hospitals only make sense if you actually need centralized, high-end medical treatment. You can't fit an MRI into a GP's office and a doctor certainly can't take one with them if they're doing house calls, nor will smaller facilities be able to detect everything in-house.

Oh, I thought you were referring to a society with sensible health-care!

The most intelligent health-care systems are ones where the method of delivery is one that suits the complaint. That doesn't necessarily mean the best - a poor but intelligent system will be more effective than a poor but stupid one, and will also be more reliable and more responsive than a rich but stupid one, but the rich but stupid system will still deliver better results in the end. What you want is rich and intelligent, but no country currently does that.

A sore throat is actually a pretty good patient. At least they have a diagnosable condition, and that puts them at least in the Top 40%. You'd be surprised how many patients' chief complaint is "my back hurts. It's been like this for the past year. I'm just tired of it."

I know folks who go to the hospital for that and things even more trivial. Like - I am not making this up - heartburn. For me I have to be just about dying before I go to the ER and wait 4 hours to be told to go home and rest and drink plenty of fluids.

Going to hospital with heartburn is actually very common, especially for people with angina. Heart attacks and heartburn have almost identical symptoms, so it makes a lot of sense to go to hospital when you've got an existing condition.

Yup - a few Saturdays ago I made an emergency call to a doctor (on a holiday weekend no less) and after discussion brought a urine sample to a hospital over a suspected urinary tract infection.

Now, for an ordinary person it might not have been the right call, but in this case the person it concerned had been in the hospital intensive care unit three times (a week each) with sepsis that originated in urinary tract infections. It has been kept under control for a few years now with vigilance and a bottle of

I know folks who go to the hospital for that and things even more trivial. Like - I am not making this up - heartburn.

Like my uncle, who went to the emergency room with chest pain, only to be treated for heartburn and sent home, only to come back to the emergency room several hours later and die of the heart attack he was actually having.
FYI, symptoms of heartburn are similar to symptoms heart attacks.

The first one more often than not is a symptom of something else and the second one can cause long term problems if not treated properly. Of course you should get professional advice for both. I'm of course not talking about a simple cough here but if you start spewing brownish stuff then it's time to visit a doctor.

I wonder if this is giving anonymous any ideas for a social hack, close the hospitals country wide because they can't do billing or check on insurance. This shows hospitals would rather close than treat someone for free.

You (probably) do no know just how right you are.
The oft-parroted "greatest healthcare system in the world" meme is often trotted out in the same sentence with "...accessible to everyone...", because yes, it's true, if you have not the means to access the greatest healthcare system in the world via more appropriate avenues, the local E.R. must treat you. And that is perhaps the biggest problem with this system. We (those of us who pay taxes AND insurance premiums) pay to have the sore throats and sprained

Then I'd go to an urgent care clinic, which takes both my insurance and cash-only payments from people who don't have insurance. If you want to win your argument against the parent post you responded to, you're going to have to beat my argument I just submitted just now. Urgent care clincs outnumber hospitals. There may be rural exceptions, but I don't think this place is rural.

What if you're poor? You have two choices:1) Urgent care, which takes cash-only payments (and usually requires them up-front), or2) Emergency rooms, which are free; you just have to say "I don't have insurance and I don't have any money". Or even better, you can say "No habla Ingles". The hospital is required to treat you, and then pass the bill on to all the other patients by charging them $10 for a tylenol pill and $20 for a band-aid.

I think it's pretty safe to assume that anyone that gets a tylenol in a hospital, and actually pays for it (or their insurance pays for it), is probably there for some much more urgent reason than a simple headache.

You would be *amazed* what some people will go to the hospital for. Then again, I'm in Canada, so they don't charge us anything anyways. But good LORD do they give dirty looks to the "I have a headache" people when they get to the sign-in counter!

Why don't they just refuse to admit them, and send them to the nearest urgent care clinic?

I can't say this is completely universal over here in the US, but for most people who have insurance, you usually have to pay something called a "co-pay" any time you visit a doctor or medical facility. This charge varies by insurance provider and by what kind of facility you're going to. So, for instance, with my insurance, if I go to a doctor's office for any kind of visit (checkup with primary care physician or vi

Look who's response is out-of-touch fuckwit: You just admitted that it's cheaper. So why would someone without insurance go to the more expensive hospital? They're going to go to one or the other regardless of price if it's truly necessary (i.e. will go into debt). So far your argument actually reinforces my "fuckwit" point by saying urgent care is a cheaper choice, which was exactly my point: Why not go to urgent care instead of a hospital? Your response is they can't afford either. Last I checked, people

If you have neither insurance nor cash, you have to go to the emergency room where they have to provide you with at least a minimum of care. You'll be hounded for the money you don't have later, but at least you get healthy enough to go stand in the unemployment line.

And the urgent care center that I go to doesn't even ask for a copay until weeks after you've gone. So you'd get a minimum level of care (actually quicker and better than the hospital in my experience), but obviously you couldn't get something like surgery. So you see, not having insurance doesn't make a difference in the situation. (Unless an urgent care center isn't nearby, or there are ones that operate differently than the ones I've gone to.)

There's a reason for this stuff: long waits are necessary because there's dozens of people there bringing their kids in for runny noses and sore throats. Charging $500 for a bandaid is necessary because all those dozens of people there for common colds aren't going to pay, so they have to pass the costs for all the non-payers on to people who do pay.

Fix the healthcare system in this county and you wouldn't see this crap.

There is a very easy way to tell the difference. If the pain is in a location the size of your finger tip, then go to the hospital (probably a bone issue). if the pain is over a larger area than that, it's muscle/tissue damage and ice will suffice. And before you say that broken/fractured bones also have muscle/tissue damage, the body does a very good job of making you only notice the bone damage.

This is just one of the many diagnostic tricks taught during almost every level of first aid.

Why, you use the Ottawa Ankle Rules [wikipedia.org], which are an evidence-based method to determine whose sprained ankles deserve an x-ray to rule out a fracture. It turns out the same mechanism of injury - getting your foot bent under (usually the outside part going down, called inversion) is not only an excellent way to cause a painful ankle sprain, but has a habit of tearing the very bottom part of your fibula off, which will buy you a few weeks in a walking boot or similar cast.

There's basically no way in which non-medical personal can use any of those rules besides 'An inability to bear weight both immediately and in the emergency department for four steps.'.

If you cannot do that, you need an x-ray. (I am assuming by 'in the emergency department' they mean 'ten to twenty minutes later', not that there is some magical property of emergency departments.) If you can take four steps, you still might need one. So people can rule themselves into needing an x-ray, but can't possibly ru

Perhaps, but IE is a major security hole. At the very least, hospitals should be absolutely required to use a secure browser. Secondly, with ERP, etc, being browser based, there's no difference from an operator standpoint between Windows and OpenBSD. You still click links, you still open tabs, you still get to set the wallpaper on the background. Ergo, there's no rational reason to use something that's expensive and insecure over something that's cheap and secure. If there are no platform-specific apps (they're all web-based) then go with the OS that is least likely to endanger service.

NP. The problem with snarky comebacks is that Slashdot doesn't have a way of unthresholding the thing a person is snarkily replying to. I'm mentally taking it that you're really replying to the AC I snarked at.:)

at my hospital we use webapps for 99% of access to results/radiography etc... with office365, isn't linux becoming the obvious answer? (ok, no outlook replacement maybe... - but all anyone uses it for is email!)

People also (ab)use the calendar function... specifically (ab)using shared calendars as a scheduling platform. They load up one calendar with 5 years of catering crap, then want to complain "why is this so slow?" and "why aren't we syncing?"

I work at a trauma center, and we go to diversion all the time. It happens whenever the ER gets backed up to the point that the patients would be better served by going to a less-full ER than by coming to ours, even if that ER is a little further away. This happens at least twice weekly, although perhaps not as often as other, less busy ERs. Yes, the virus undoubtedly brought them to this clogged state much faster, but this isn't nearly the crisis the summary (or the article it is summarizing) makes it out to be.

Hospitals are often quite badly prepared for this sort of thing. A big problem is the number of computerised "medical devices" where the vendor insists on a very specific update policy (or very specific restrictions on 3rd party software).

I worked at one hospital where Confiker took the whole IT system down. A big problem in repairing the damage was that there were a lot of PACS (digital X-ray/CT/MRI viewing/storage) workstations where the PACS vendor would not permit the relevant windows updates or a 3rd party anti-virus to be installed on the servers/workstations. They relented after a 24 hour stand-off, after they realised that they was nothing they could do to keep the system happy enough to meet the SLA without the updates and a suitable anti-malware.

I work at another hospital now, where similar lack of updates due to comparability with old business apps prevents updates. E.g. The PCs still run XP SP1 (even the brand-new quad core xeons). There also doesn't appear to be funding for updating anti-malware - the hospital use Sophos 7 (which became unsupported last year).

This hospital has chronic problems with virus/malware infestation on a number of office machines - but while IT can clean the computers manually, there seems to be a reservoir if infection on file-servers, USB drives, etc. So the infections come straight back after a manual deletion. This hasn't caused a catastrophe locally, so management don't seem to care, but it is a major annoyance, as infected documents frequently end-up getting e-mailed out to other hospitals/doctors and destroyed without trace by the recipient's e-mail system. Docs have been known to put the files on a USB stick, take it home, clean it with an up-to-date virus scanner and then e-mail it out.

"This hospital has chronic problems with virus/malware infestation on a number of office machines - but while IT can clean the computers manually, there seems to be a reservoir if infection on file-servers, USB drives, etc. So the infections come straight back after a manual deletion. This hasn't caused a catastrophe locally, so management don't seem to care, but it is a major annoyance, as infected documents frequently end-up getting e-mailed out to other hospitals/doctors and destroyed without trace by th

That was my first thought. No plan. As a technologist I'm peeved by the fact that people assume a system will always function properly because it always has in the past. Therefore it is terribly difficult to get a business to plan for outages.

Yes, for very good reason network medical device vendors are specific as to what client software modifications can be made. This includes client-side security measures such as service packs, security patches, and antivirus. This is primarily due to FDA regulations which require full software qualification, validation, testing, and documentation. The full scope and diligent execution of an FDA-compliant quality safety process takes time and costs money. This is not like IT operations patching a web server; a

At a hospital you also often have lots of really flakey embedded devices and custom applications which don't react well to being probed... Once a worm starts spreading around the network and scanning, these devices can also crash under the load despite not being directly infected.

Part of the problem is that you can't tell doctors what to do. Thanks to the AMA cartel, there are always fewer doctors than we need, so the result is that they hold the whip hand in employment relationships. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it gets annoying when they have that kind of privilege and no one else does.

People will indeed browser facebook from the MRI...If you have a browser on the machine which can access the internet then sooner or later it will be used.People also browse the internet from "servers" for the same reason.

The solution is for machines which don't need browsers to not have any installed, and for those which only need to access internal web based applications to be restricted to only accessing those.

the very first internet hack of a medical system (back in the late 1980s or mid 1990s IIRC) was, in fact, an MRI or CAT scanner in San Diego. This predated virus problems - it was just a computer that was on the internet, and someone was able to figure out the default user/pass. I suspect it was a CAT scanner, because according to what I read back then, the penetrator could have adjusted the parameters in such a way as to cause lethal injury. I can't imagine how an MRI could do that. In this case, the p

Normally it is not an issue but with HIPPA it is very serious this irritated me. Someone can literally hold the hospital hostage if these medical records for tens of millions of dollars and they need at least a patched and still supported version of XP like corporate America does. The problem is custom medical software and custom devices for Xrays and MRIs use IE 6 still and are not certifed with XP SP 3... unless you give them $$$$ to buy all new epuipment over again. This is new software being developed in 2010 I may add requiring IE 6 and some software wont even run with SP 3 on XP. This means no security patches.

It does not surprise me there are viruses on hospital computers as they can't be patched. WIth HIPPA you would think a hospital would always demand and use state of the art fully patched systems for security. But if were the medical records software company or make MRI machines I would be still requiring IE 6 too so I can then price gouch and double dip and charge3 another $400,000 in 2013 when support ends. I can make even MORE money.... end rant

The greed is incredible in the industry, but doctors can be the most and worst clients and users if you chat with anyone who supports them. THey feel supperior because they have those PHDs and make tons of money. Luckily I just helped install stuff and ignored the rest of the staff. As a result I.T. staff just never upgrade as they do not want to deal with these users at all

I happen to be typing this from a rebuild machine I'm working on at the moment, building from XP Pro x86 SP1a (long story, not my choice. License issues. Naturally not for me, since I run Linux and BSD exclusively). Microsoft is rate-limiting the download speed of the XP SP3 to near dialup speeds. Maybe this is to encourage folks to migrate to W7. It downloaded much quicker through Citrix from a share in our CoLo three states away, through the same pipe at the same time, so I got our copy rather than t

Yet another example of how technology makes us stupid. How ever did we manage BEFORE computers and computer records... I guess patients just died in the hallways. The other day I went to a tire shop and asked the guy for some tires. He said he didn't have any. I asked him if he could check to see if another store in the chain across town had some. He said the computer network was down, and he couldn't do it from there. I guess telephones no longer work for calling the other store up and asking them like they did 20 years ago.

While I might agree that some people do become stupid with tech (and oversimplify the complexity that computers are covering up and compensating), we also can't oversimplify the fact that it's not trivial to go back 20+ years to pre-computer procedures overnight for a temporary problem that will go away in a few days (or minutes or hours, as in the case of the tire shop employee).

Besides employees not getting paid enough to go the extra mile (or that they're supposed to be doing something else), the likely end reason is likely that it isn't affordable or efficient or even possible. As it is, a common complain in the healthcare industry is that they're understaffed, and with automation, the number of employees has been reduced so much they would never be able to deal with the backlog manually (assuming that enough employees had the training to deal with pre-computer issues). Not to mention that in a complex team workflow, exceptions would make it risky (ie, if the patient isn't registered in the system, his/hers tests can't be attached, so the doctors can't access them properly, opening the hospital to liabilities).

Old systems likely broke down and got replaced by digital systems that require much less from their operators. Before they might have been able to print, but maybe that printer isn't there anymore. Going all the way back to pre-computers might mean leaches.

As for your tire experience. Maybe the employee was lazy and wasn't willing to go the extra mile. Or maybe he didn't have a yellow pages or a company directory (which might have been on-line). Or, likely, he is supposed to tend the counter, and isn't allowed to do something else when he is supposed to be servicing people coming in the door (or answering the phone). In the "olden days", we might have been dealing with the store owner, which would be more inclined to GEM, but with franchises and staffs cut to a minimum for the sake of 80%+ normalcy, it's no surprise that the quality of service suffers.

In spirit, I agree that computers have made it too easy for stupidity to thrive. In fact, they have made it so easy that it is endemic at the business level, not just at the employee level. Rather than doing the work, businesses just farm it out to someone else, and then to someone else (ie, the "Cloud philosophy"), and you end up dealing with shells that are so far removed from the data that have no knowledge or interest in providing a reasonable service that falls slightly outside the normal expectation. And even when it's a typical offering, quality is often substandard and it only fulfills the need in the most general sense. But I'm starting to digress to another topic, so I'll stop.

As someone who works in a hospital i can tell you that reverting to a paper and pencil system requires at least 10x the number of workers for the same number of patients. And they would make many life threatening record keeping mistakes mistakes that are time consuming to identify since they would have to use this system infrequently if ever.

As an example transcribing dozens of lab values on possibly hundreds of patients and a worker transposes a potassium of 7.3 to 3.7. That patient could die from that sim

The example I was always given was to imagine being open on an operating table and the operating doctor needs to access your records to confirm something before proceeding and your records cannot be reached, so he sends a runner to obtain them, adding an extra 5 - 10 minutes to the procedure. time during which you're cut open and vulnerable to infection and blood loss. Not a fun scenario, but a very realistic one.

Imaginary and hypothetical scenarios are fun aren't they? Have you ever held a scalpel and made the incision? Have you every done it for god knows how many thousands of hours, at any and all possible times, when you felt good, when you felt sick, and when you should have gone to bed 10 hours ago? Don't worry, your scenario is absolutely the last thing that will ever happen to you. There's no last minute "oh I forgot something" once the operation has already begun. Usually you are worked on by professionals

Preaching to the choir - I am a physician. I don't believe you because I work in a country that isn't computerized yet. If you transpose 3.7 and 7.3 so easily without a computer to double-check things for you then you prove my argument: computers make us stupid.

I deal with IT departments everyday for Hospitals, Schools, and other business in the South East and the biggest issue I see is lack of patching on Windows and Linux machines while keeping the virus definitions up-to-date. The IT departments know that patching is important but feel they can't patch an approved FDA device or the staff lacks the bandwidth to implement a proper patch testing cycle. The only solution that I see that consistently works for these type business is to virtually patch these machin

What happened back then was it took a lot more staff to treat a lot more people. This issue isn't keeping doctors from treating patients, it's keeping them from treating as many patients. Everything is probably having to be done on paper, which means that someone (a nurse more than likely) has to walk that paper where ever it needs to be. This has the double impact of taking more time than it normally would, and requiring someone to take time out their normal duty to move it. That is why they are still taking actual emergency cases, and turning away non-life threatening, less serious cases. So that the ER does not get completely backed up that they can't treat a life-threatening case that may show up.

Always things like lung, brain, prostate, liver, colon, rectum and other important parts. Why not cancer of the pinky ??

Because your pinky is essentially just bone, muscle, and skin, with a little fat. So when people get cancers originating in their pinkies, they get lumped up with the rest of cancers of the bones, muscles, skin, and (more rarely) adipose tissue.

I always amazes me when business comes to a screeching halt, when the power goes out. Or the computer crashes. Or, whatever. FFS, people, life goes on, with or without computers! The grocer can sell milk and eggs without a computer, traffic lights can work without a computer, manufacturing can go on without computers, and doctors can operate without a computer!

I just LOVE computers - but I can perform any job given me, without a damned computer to h

I on the other hand can't do my job without computers - not so easy to VPN in to a remote server to do stuff without a computer. The tech has gone beyond manual "pulse dialling" by tapping the phone hook, and then whistling the modem tones:). Of course without computers, there wouldn't be servers at the other end to VPN to either...;)Seriously though, a lot of manual work has been replaced by computers. So there are actually a lot fewer people doing those jobs. When the computers stop working, those few p

They haven't come to a screeching halt. They are still handling the most critical emergencies. They are at reduced capacity. Why should it surprise you that they are able to do more with the computers than without? Isn't that the whole reason they have them? If you took a carpenter's hammers away, wouldn't you expect him to lose productivity?

Are you claiming you can get just as much done w/ pencil and paper as with a spreadsheet and take no longer to do it? That you replaced a pencil and papoer costing und

Businesses DO come to a screeching halt, when the computer quits. I've seen it at banks, grocery stores, gas stations - you name it. The lights flicker, the computers all go offline, and business stops.

In this case, the hospital is indeed handling emergency cases - but the hospital remains crippled. If/when a hospital gets a virus on their network, that should not impact their ability to care for people, simple as that. Life and death should come before considerations of speed, convenience, profitabilit

There are two main reasons this has become true: electronic medical records and efficiency. The former is being mandated by the government. The latter is due to the lack of enough people to fill slots in the healthcare industry due to the personnel crunch, requiring hospitals to do more with less.

I do technology consulting for hospitals. One thing that's always pissed me off is the nursing shortage. Hospitals go out of their way to woo doctors to their facilities, but nursing pay remains pathetic by com